werner@ut-ngp.UUCP (03/24/84)
[from the business section of the local paper of March 22]
Production of Odyssey, a pioneer of home video-game systems
has been discontinued. The Odyssey division of Knoxville-based
NAP Consumer Electronics Corp., which began marketing home video
games in 1971, will be dissolved because of "general market
conditions," a NAP representative said. Odyssey orders will be
filled as long as supplies last, probably into early 1985.
[ expect to see them at close-out prices soon. The machine was once
considered to have great growth capabilities, having a membrane-keyboard
when noone else had anything similar. Being of early '70s design, I have
a lot of respect for the machine, which I just recently acquired (a gift).
And at close-out prices, it will make a nice addition to any collection
of "has-beens" and "once-state-of-the-art". I'll be looking for those
sales, voice synthesizer and all. ]barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) (03/25/84)
-------------------- From: werner@ut-ngp.UUCP Date: Sat, 24-Mar-84 06:52:38 EST The machine was once considered to have great growth capabilities, having a membrane-keyboard when noone else had anything similar. Being of early '70s design, I have a lot of respect for the machine -------------------- The Odyssey that was being produced in the early 70s was nothing like the modern ones, and it was not much to respect. I got an Odyssey in 1974, and it was very crude. It basically played variants of Pong. It had a half-dozen cartridges for a repertoire of about fifteen games. You played different games with the same cartridge by using overlays on the TV. The differences between the cartridges was whether there was a divider line on the screen (pong used a divider, tennis and hockey used overlays), whether there was a ball at all, the visibility of the player pieces (there was a "ghost hunt" game, in which one player was invisible some of the time), and a few other features. However, they were all basically the same: the controls controlled the position of the players, and the players unually either hit the ball or each other. Another game I remember was a skiing game; the overlay was a bunch of ski trails, and you had to maneuver your player through it without hitting the trees. It did have some neat features which have not been copied much. The controls had two main knobs, one for horizontal position and ther other for vertical. There was a little knob inside one of the knobs, which was labeled "english", and could be used to make the ball swerve after you have hit it. -- Barry Margolin ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar